In the trade they are known as “manufactured housing,”
although their residents prefer the term “mobile
homes.” You may remember that on the TV show “The
Rockford Files,” James Garner’s character
lived in one with his dad. As of 2000, Virginia boasted
more than 185,000 single, double, triple-wide or larger
units on private property and in parks throughout the
state – 6.4 percent of the total housing in the
Commonwealth.
They are so popular in some rural areas that Patrick County
author Martin Clark, a circuit court judge, titled his
2000 comic legal thriller The
Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living. “I
have a rooster, a pickup truck, a fly rod and a lawn tractor,”
Clark said in an interview for the paperback publication
of his novel. It touched a nationwide chord and became
a New York Times Notable Book.
Whatever they’re called ? the term “trailer”
lost its appeal in the 1950s ? many people have a few
misconceptions about mobile homes. First of all, they
don’t actually move. Or, they usually move only
once, from factory to site. These days, with their pitched
roof add-ons and new siding, many cannot be distinguished
from on-site homes. And depending on what an owner is
willing to pay -- in 2002, the average price in the Old
Dominion ranged from $28,000 for a single to $54,000 for
a double wide – mobile homes can be equipped with
such amenities as hardwood floors, porcelain sinks and
High-Definition TV.
Secondly, in a number of communities, mobile homes are
losing their underclass aura. On the West Coast, mobile
home parks are becoming the residence of choice for the
upwardly mobile who want a beach view at a reasonable
price. Your lot neighbors in southern California could
include actresses Minnie Driver or Sally Field.
In Missouri, there’s a mobile home park that’s
a gated community, and a few years ago, Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee moved into a mobile home while the governor’s
mansion underwent a $12 million renovation.
While the residents of Shawsville, Va., may not view themselves
as the Commonwealth glitterati, 47 percent of them live
in mobile homes, according to a 2002 article in the Roanoke
Times. Mobile home parks boomed in the 1960s and
1970s in the area, partially because nearby Roanoke County’s
zoning rules were much more restrictive than neighboring
Montgomery County. The feds even got involved in building
mobile home parks after the Roanoke River flooded in 1972.
An 82-year resident, who was one of the first to move
into one of these federal parks, praises her community.
“Everybody tries to be neighbors and get along.
No fussing, no fighting,” she said in the Times
article.
Today, affordable housing advocates have urged jurisdictions
to consider mobile home parks as alternative housing for
professionals such as teachers, fire and police personnel
who can’t afford housing in the areas in which they
work. Still, it can be a hard sell to those who aren’t
clued in to the new zeitgeist.
The checkered history of mobile homes began in the 1920s,
when the availability of paved roads triggered wanderlust
among Americans. A Minnesotan named Arthur Sherman is
credited with inventing the first affordable, mass-produced
trailer home 1929, which he called the “Covered
Wagon,” according to a 1998 Smithsonian
article “House Trailers.” It cost $395. By
1936 Sherman was the major manufacturer of travel-trailers.
A Virginian, seamstress Mary Elliott Wing of Roanoke,
also may have been an early adapter of the mobile home.
According to one source, she was inspired by the dimensions
of Noah’s ark to build the first true modern mobile
home.
Trailers enjoyed their heyday in the ’40s, when
they housed shipbuilders, factory workers, and the thousands
of returning GIs during the post-war housing crisis. But
by the 1950s, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called them
“dens of vice and corruption.” Part of the
bad rap came from shoddy construction and unethical salespeople.
It would be another quarter-century before the industry
was regulated; the National Manufactured Housing Construction
and Safety Act was passed in 1976, and in Virginia, the
Manufactured Housing Board now regulates the industry.
The nine-member board is responsible for licensing mobile
home dealers, brokers, manufacturers and salespeople.
Even with their new respectability, there is one drawback
to living in a mobile home. The National Weather Service
reports that while only 10 percent of Americans live in
trailer parks, half of those killed by tornadoes are mobile
home residents. Newer models, however, feature wood framing,
fire walls, stabilizing plates and steel tie-downs for
greater safety.
Whatever their construction, mobile homes seem to have
found a niche in modern culture. “They are attitude
as much as architecture,” wrote authors Chiori Santiago
and Maggie Steber in Smithsonian’s “House
Trailers.” You can witness them on TV’s “Trailer
Park Boys,” a Canadian cult mockumentary broadcast
Sunday nights on BBC America; you can also share haunted
mobile home stories at www.trailerghost.com,
a site developed by a seven-year trailer resident. No
Virginian has posted a ghostly trailer tale yet, so here’s
your opportunity!
May 10, 2004
(Got a question? Check out Ask
a Librarian Live.)
Nice & Curious
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